Oscillian’s Escape from Beijing

By Chris “Python Blue” Day

There are some more obscure 80s movies that, in many cases, I can’t recommend enough. It appears that Oscillian has taken ideas from two such John Carpenter movies, namely Escape from New York and Big Trouble in Little China and mashed into one EP: Escape from Beijing, complete with a picture of Kurt Russell in the artwork.





While the track titles are also clearly influenced by the two movies, the music itself proves much more original in nature, which makes the listen even more worth it.

 'Escape from Beijing – Main Theme' is a great start to this EP/mock soundtrack, though it’s also the track that sounds the most like typical OutRun music. 'Up the Yellow River' has a much more fitting feel for the name of the EP, particularly with its eastern melodies and ambience alongside the beat and bass.



A good example of how the EP is original is, ironically, with 'It’s All in the Reflexes'. While the title is Jack Burton’s catchphrase in Big Trouble, it’s a completely independent sound, a sound I imagine fitting very well for video game boss music, and makes no use of sampling from the movie despite my expectations. In contrast, 'Snake Burton' does make use of a movie sample, but it’s not the focus of the piece, which appears reserved for the somewhat spooky chords.



'Great Wall of China' I imagine will easily influence me for a while. The first half of the piece, like many soundtracks, focuses less on the beat and more on melody and sound design. I particularly love the haunting ambiences in this piece. 'Send Him In', the finale piece, makes good credits music, as it’s the one sung song in the EP and might be the most pop oriented.



Overall, Escape from Beijing is highly recommended by Synthetix.FM and can be bought from Oscillian’s Bandcamp page here.